Firefly 11/8

Cafe Society
1

Two weeks ago, I had never even heard of this show. Thanks to its name popping up in various threads around here, I finally went to Fox’s website and checked it out.
It seemed like a routine description for a show. A bunch of different personalities roaming about the galaxy in a ship. Whoopee.
But I trusted my fellow dopers and finally sat down and watched it tonight.

What a great show! I got into the plotline immediately even having missed…what? the first quarter of a season?Excuse me for not knowing names but…
I like how they don’t try to tie up all the loose ends at the end of an episode. That scene with the doctor and the girl in the gift shop where he acts superior and she calls him on his egotism. If this had been a Star Trek episode, there’d be a big apology scene at the end where the doctor realizes the error of his ways and tries to be more accomodating in the future.
They don’t do that here. It’s just a random scene thrown in and I think it’s great because, let’s face it, people don’t change their ways that quickly.
The crew doesn’t always have confidence that the captain is doing the best job, but they still know better than to speak out against him. That’s because the captain is greedy but still loyal to his crew.

The writing and acting are both good. Even corny lines are played off as throwaways and not built up as if YOU MUST LAUGH AT THIS.

I’m really not sure what sort of critque I can make on this episode, as I’m new to the Firefly universe. Still, I was impressed.

Friday nights, eh? I have no doubt Fox is going to cancel it. Sigh…

2

The scene with the doctor and the girl wasn’t exactly random; there’s been some romantic attraction brewing between the two for a couple of episodes.

3

Yep, it was another strong showing. I loved the look of that alliance ship - it looked like what I imagine a spaceship should look like - haphazard and huge.

I don’t think the show is going to survive, though. It only got a 2.8 in the ratings last week, and is one of the lowest-rated network shows. My main hope is that they give the show enough time with an eye to airing enough episodes to at least make a good DVD box set.

4

I saw the show for the first time and I liked it as well for pretty much the same reasons; the writing is restrained and doesn’t try to milk every other moment for sentimental effect (like say the West Wing). The acting is also excellent.

I don’t know the backstory of the doctor and his sister but yet what I saw today did a great job of showing how much he cares for her and how much he has risked to rescue her. All without the usual histrionics.

Still I am not sure I will follow the serial since I tend not to be disciplined at following shows week after week. I really wish they would release more shows on video and closer to when they are broadcast.

5

I watched tonight’s episode and enjoyed it very much. The character development has been very good across the board.

I think I’m also developing a crush on the ship’s engineer, Jewel Staite, which should ensure repeated viewing. She’s so cute that I can overlook the fact that her first name is Jewel!

6

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by CyberPundit *
I don’t know the backstory of the doctor and his sister but yet what I saw today did a great job of showing how much he cares for her and how much he has risked to rescue her.
I don’t think much backstory has been established (but then I’ve missed a couple of episodes). All I know is that he’s pretty stuffy, he freed his sister from some Alliance “Academy” where they were conducting weird experiments on her either because of, or the cause of, her weird psi powers.

TiVo! That’s been my solution. I was afraid when I got the thing that I’d turn into a big lump, watching even more TV than I used to. But since I’ve been busy it’s been great to have and I’ve actually managed to use the thing somewhat effectively and the net result is I watch the shows I want to watch and spend less time just sitting there watching whatever’s on. And in cases like this it works extra well, because I’ve got a few weeks’ worth of episodes saved up to watch in big continuity-heavy chunks.

(Don’t get me wrong, I still am of the mind that the TiVo is a representation of everything that’s wrong with “decadent capitalist” America, but damn if I don’t get a lot of use out of it.)

I dunno, I’m of a mind to think that they’ll give it more a chance than they would otherwise, just because of the names attached to it. “Buffy” didn’t take off until it’s second season at least, and it’s turned into a pretty significant money-maker, if not in ratings then in all the merchandising and tie-ins. But that may be just me giving more credit to studio execs than they’re worth. Still, as I understand it, Whedon’s production company has a pretty big stake with Fox with Buffy and Angel and all the video/DVD sales, so I would be that Fox would “forgive” low ratings in order to keep that relationship going.

7

Oh yeah, and before I got distracted by my improper use of the QUOTE tag, I meant to mention that “Firefly” has really been growing on me. The first couple of episodes I could take or leave, but they’ve slowly been getting their footing and it seems to be coming together.

The one that was told in flashback, where the engine breaks down and the engine remembers meeting each of the crew as the life support systems run out, was the episode that turned it around for me. It was the first one where the characters really started to “gel”. (It doesn’t even seem so much a Cowboy Bebop rip-off anymore!)

8

Hmmm…, Shepard has a back story. And the little sister is very well played. A good series. Doomed. Unless my hostile online takeover of FOX goes through. Not sure I trust MoneyMonkey.com, tho…

9

I love this show, it’s become one of my must see hours on TV. I enjoy that the characters aren’t all goody two shoes. Jayne rummaging through the doctor’s stuff, making fun of the fact that they abandoned them, was classic. Even though Jayne doesn’t like Simon, he was there with the weaponry to save them.

The reacton of the characters with each other seems very natural. People say dumb things sometimes, or get insulted, and there isn’t a forced reconciliation. They take jabs at each other, or joke at tough times, just like regular people.

One other thing I’ve noticed (or NOT noticed, if you will) is a lack of extreme stupidity on the part of the characters. I can’t really think of a situation where a character did something stupid to get themselves in trouble. Maybe a bad decision or two, I suppose, but nothing that had me looking at the screen saying “What the hell is that guy doing, is he an idiot?” Most TV shows these days have a scene like that in every episode, heck, they use those moments to drive the damn plot! These characters seem to be actually competent and just get into tough situations.

10

By far the best sci-fi on television right now, IMHO, and I’d like to confess that I’m another spud with a crush on Jewel Staite.

So what the heck was on the Preacher’s Ident card, anyway?

11

Sol Grundy,
I have considered Tivo but I am not sure I watch enough TV to justify the expense. I would much prefer to have the option to rent a video every now and then

“It doesn’t even seem so much a Cowboy Bebop rip-off anymore!”
I thought about Cowboy Bebop the moment I heard about Firefly as well. But from yesterday’s episode Firefly appears to be a little more serious and also more connected across episodes than Bebop. (reversing the usual anime comparison). Have you seen any actual references to Cowboy Bebop in earlier episodes? Anyway it wouldn’t bother me in the slightest if Firefly did borrow since it is obviously a fine show in its own right.

12

I don’t think it’s reasonable to characterize Mal as “greedy.” If greed were his motivation he wouldn’t have the doctor or his sister or Shepard on board. They consume resources and with the exception of the doctor don’t contribute anything. No, Mal is an interesting melange of idealism and pragmatism, and loyalty is just assumed. I liked the scene right at the end of the episode where (I’ve never done a spoiler tag so forgive me if it goes awry) Simon asks why Mal came back for him and River and Mal just says “you’re part of the crew. Why are we still talking aout this?” For whatever reason of background or situation Simon has held himself apart from and above the rest (as shown by his outburst in the general store) and the simple gesture of pulling back Kaylee’s chair in the mess hall went farther in showing his intent to break down those barriers he’s put up than any speech could have.

I’m heartened by the news that FOX has ordered more scripts (for a total of sixteen). Not as heartened as a season-long commitment would have made me but I have hopes that FOX understands they have something special in the show and give it a chance for its audience to find it.

13

Well, I would hope that FOX will give it a shot because of its merchandizing potential, and because of its merits, and because of Whedon’s reputation of success with quirky shoes.

However, I have a one-word rebuttal to that notion: Futurama. The Simpsons is now one of the most profitable shows in television history, and yet FOX has never really given Futurama a chance. It’s been bounced around the schedule and pre-empted so much that no one can ever find it. So it has never had a chance to build up a regular viewership. And now production has been halted.

Then there’s Action, which was universally praised by critics, had a fanatical fan base building, and was torpedoed by FOX after half a season. FOX is such a strange network - they come up with the best shows on TV, and then make the worst decisions when scheduling them.

Does anyone know if Firefly is an expensive show to make? On the one hand, the low-tech worlds means no expensive CGI landscapes and interior sets. On the other hand, there are a reasonable number of CGI scenes in space and in some of the high-tech buildings. The amount of patience FOX has for the show is probably inversely proportional to how much money they are bleeding.

My main hope is that they will realize that if they kill it now, they won’t have enough episodes for syndication on something like the Sci-Fi channel, and they won’t have enough for a DVD box set. They’ll need at least a full season for that.

My understanding is that they have contracted for 13 episodes, which have probably already been produced. That would be a half-season, right? And they’ve bought 3 more scripts so that if they decide to extend the series they’ll be able to go directly to production while ordering more of them. So we’ll definitely see six or seven more episodes, and maybe a full season. We can hope.

One of the things that I like about Firefly is that it’s really the first science-fiction TV show I can remember that captures the spirit of earlier ‘pulp’ science fiction, like the Heinlein Juveniles. The women are almost prototypical Heinlein females. The ship breaks down. The crew has to rely on its own wits.

And if the Preacher turns out to be someone who saved the head of the alliance or stopped an ambush or something, then it will be very much like ‘Baslim’ in Heinlein’s Citizen of the Galaxy. That’s the first thing I thought of when the Alliance guys looked at his ident card.

14

Another good show, I am really enjoying it. Yet why do I have the slight feeling of dread about it.

Fox. That’s why. They would have cancelled Seinfeld in its first season too.

Idiots.

:mad:

15

Mmmm… Kaylee…

16

I enjoyed seeing how the close relationship between brother and sister had existed since they were kids, and how Simon was willing to die along with her, if it had come to that. Next week’s ep. should provide more detail on what happened to mess up her mind so badly.

I’m with El_Kabong --I want to know what the full deal is with the Preacher.

*For those who also watch Enterprise : There was a joke about how it would have been better to carry beagles as cargo rather than cows, because the waste would have been less to deal with. This had to be a joke on Porthos, the beagle. And in the ENT episode “Shuttlepod One,” Malcolm Reed has a dream/fantasy sequence about T’Pol in which she tells him that his first name, in Vulcan, means “Serenity” (I’m pretty sure of my memory, though I don’t have the tape right now)…and that’s the name of Malcolm Reynolds’ ship.
Conclusion 1: The writers are keeping track of each other’s shows.
Conclusion 2: I watch too much TV.

17

"I enjoyed seeing how the close relationship between brother and sister "

I enjoyed the big guns.
:slight_smile:

18

huh huh, you said “big’uns”

19

Well, I don’t mean to be a wet blanket so much as to offer counter-evidence: I watched several episodes of “Futurama,” I was all set to love it, and just didn’t like it at all. Didn’t find it funny, didn’t find any of the characters remotely interesting, just nothing in it ever clicked for me. That’s not to say I’m the Grand High Arbiter of Taste, just that the show wasn’t universally loved, although it does seem to have a very devoted following. To be honest, I was surprised to see it still on; I’d assumed it was going to be cancelled very quickly.

I’m not familiar with Heinlein at all, but I do get the pulp sci-fi feel to the show, and I like it a lot. It’s really nice to see a sci-fi show that isn’t a cookie-cutter Blade Runner style dystopian future, and also not a Star Trek utopian future.

I’ve never seen a direct reference, and I’d actually be surprised if the similarities were anything other than coincidence. As popular as Bebop is, it’s still pretty obscure, even for the sci-fi geeks who make “Firefly”. But of course, I could be wrong; it’s happened before. Combining westerns & science fiction is nothing new, obviously – Outland is at least a dozen years old (too lazy to look in the imdb).

20

That’s what Gene Roddenberry did with the original Star Trek series. When conceptualizing it, that’s the very phrase he used, “Combining westerns and science fiction.” At least, that’s what the “Star Trek Compendium” said.

Man, I like Firefly alot!